First base is an offense-first position. Sure, it’s great to have a first baseman who is handy with the glove and can scoop errant throws, but by and large, it’s a position for sluggers. Even though the position supplied both of last season’s MVPs — Freddie Freeman and José Abreu — it’s production doesn’t hold up as strongly as it has compared to previous years. From 2018 through the 2021 season thus far, first basemen have averaged a 108 wRC+ compared to an average wRC+ of 115 over the 2000-17 seasons.

There are plenty of teams suffering from lackluster production at first base but I want to highlight two of them: the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays. The Brewers have managed a measly 68 wRC+ and -0.5 WAR, with contributions mostly from the duo of Keston Hiura (who is now in Triple-A) and Daniel Vogelbach. The Rays have been a bit better with a wRC+ of 82 and -0.1 WAR. These aren’t the worst teams in the majors at first base but they do share something in common; they once had Jesús Aguilar under team control and let him go.

In his tenure with the Marlins after being selected off waivers on December 2, 2019, Aguilar has solidified himself as the team’s primary first baseman, slashing .254/.356/.469 with 14 homers across his two seasons (the stats in this piece are through May 9); that’s good for 126 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR. This season has been particularly good to Aguilar so far. He’s slashing .269/.363/.490 and is in the top 10 in the majors among first basemen in wRC+ (9th) and WAR (9th). Not bad for a waiver pickup! I make mention of his previous clubs’ oversight not to shame them; it’s not the first time a valuable player has been overlooked. But his path to the player he is today is a unique one. Read the rest of this entry »

If it feels as though you’re seeing more extra-innings games than usual this year, it’s not just your imagination. Nor is it your confirmation bias — assuming, that is, that you’re not a fan of the new-fangled rule that starts every inning after the ninth with a runner on second and thus regard every instance of such games as a seed between the teeth. Not only are more games going past nine innings this year than last, but the rate of extra-innings games is higher than it’s been in more than half a century. Unfortunately, with scoring at its lowest level since 2015, we’re probably in for more of the same over the remainder of this season.

The extra-innings rule, which was introduced in the minor leagues for the 2018 season and had previously been used in international play, was adopted last year as part of the COVID-19 health and safety protocols. The goal was to end extra-innings games more quickly, thereby reducing players’ time in proximity to each other and their risk of spreading COVID-19, as well as reducing their amount of wear and tear via marathon games. The hope was that the rule would add some excitement as well as a layer of strategy by creating an immediate level of urgency given the automatic placement of a runner in scoring position.

The rule did what it was supposed to do last year in terms of shortening games, at least as measured by innings. Extra-inning games — and here I’m excluding the ones attached to seven-inning doubleheader games — averaged 10.42 innings in 2020, down from 11.26 in ’19 and 11.17 in ’18. The percentage of games going past 11 innings dropped to 0.7%, down from 2.3% in 2019 and 2.8% in ’18. Only two games lasted into the 13th inning, compared to 37 in 2019 and 39 in ’18.

As for “excitement,” that’s subjective, but the rule gained a surprising amount of acceptance within the game once people saw it in action. In November, Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark told Sportico’s Barry Bloom that the players were interested in continuing with the rule in order to cut down the stress on pitchers’ arms and position players’ legs, and commissioner Rob Manfred loved it, of course, crowing, “It was obviously adopted as a health and safety rule so games wouldn’t go on too long. But I just think it had appeal even to some traditional members of the media.” Read the rest of this entry »

There have been some scary moments in the first few weeks of the 2021 major league season. On April 28, Phillies Manager Joe Girardi was ejected after both Didi Gregorius and Bryce Harper were hit by pitches while they were playing the Cardinals. Harper’s incident was particularly scary as he was hit in the face with a 97 mph fastball. On April 5, Cubs catcher Willson Contreras was plunked by a 93 mph fastball to the helmet. Two days later Reds rookie Jonathan India had a similar moment after a fastball ricocheted off his helmet.

It’s not your imagination: batters are being hit by wayward pitches at a record clip. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic made note of the trend this morning. Baseball Prospectus’ Rob Mains recently published an excellent breakdown of this year’s record-setting pace for hit batsmen. I was particularly taken aback by this chart showing that prior to 2018, no season in baseball history had a hit batsman in more than 1 in 103 plate appearances:

Mains continues:

There was one batter hit per 96 plate appearances in 2018, a new record. It fell further, to 94, in 2019. Then all the way to 81 in last year’s short, weird season.

This year? Through Tuesday night’s games, it’s down to 74.5. Batters are being hit thirty-eight percent more frequently than in 1901. There are just over eight hit batters for every five just a decade ago. We’re averaging 0.997 hit batters per game in 2021, a single HBP shy of one per game—a level the sport’s never approached. Batters so far have a .309 on-base percentage. Hit batters account for thirteen points of that figure. Ten years ago, there were only eight points of hit batters in MLB’s .321 OBP.

I wanted to take a look at possible reasons the HBP rate is at record levels so far in 2021, but first we need to be clear about which parts of this trend are continuations from previous seasons and which parts are actually new. In 2019, Devan Fink demonstrated that the HBP rate per plate appearance was approaching the highest levels seen since the early 1900s. He looked at increased velocity and reliever usage to demonstrate that while a pitches’ speed didn’t necessarily mean a pitcher had worse command, relievers had a larger share of HBP than their starting counterparts. Read the rest of this entry »

We are reaching peak levels of Shohei Ohtani early in the 2021 season. The true two-way play we were teased with in 2018 is now on full display, with both hitting and pitching in the same game. But as incredible as the hitting has been, there are still questions about Ohtani’s performance as a pitcher: In 18.2 innings, he has somehow pitched to a 2.41 ERA and 3.96 FIP despite a 22% walk rate that is third worst in the league among pitchers with 10 innings or more. Yet in the midst of massive control issues and everything he’s doing at the plate, Ohtani is continuing to develop as a pitcher, adding a multi-faceted cutter to the pitch mix.

There’s a Jekyll and Hyde nature that comes about even within Ohtani’s starts. Take a look at his April 26 outing in Texas to see what I’m talking about.

Updating Ohtani's night on the mound…

1st inning: 4 runs, 2 hits, 2 walks, HBP, 1 K, 11/29 strikes
Since: 0 runs, 1 hit, 0 walks, 8 Ks, 30/46 strikes https://t.co/H9xcc9hH6i

— Jack Harris (@ByJackHarris) April 27, 2021

Something obviously clicked after the first, and all was well again. But looking at his pitch usage that night tells a story itself about where Ohtani is in his development as a pitcher.

It’s an overly simple bit of visualization, and it should be pretty clear what’s going on: Ohtani is largely only comfortable with the fastball and splitter. You can see that the slider, curveball and cutter barely feature, with the latter two popping up in the first inning but not after and the slider appearing only in the fifth and sixth. That’s in line with his career (70 innings) to date: fastball (52% usage), splitter (21%), slider (12%), curve (6%), and cutter (7%). Not that there isn’t precedent for a pitcher who can live primarily off of a four-seam/splitter mix (cf. Kevin Gausman), but it’s a dangerous line for a starter to walk, especially with Ohtani’s command as is.

Read the rest of this entry »

In 2018, Matt Barnes had a promising season for the Red Sox. He struck out 36.2% of the batters he faced en route to a 3.65 ERA and 2.71 FIP. His one weakness? He walked 11.7% of the batters he faced, a dangerous number. That pattern carried through to 2019; he struck out 38.6% of his opponents but walked 13.3% of them. That strikeout rate is wonderful, but the walks gave him little margin for error, as evidenced by 2020, when he struck out 30.4% of his opponents (still great) but walked 13.7% on his way to a below-replacement-level season.

In 2021, you’ll never believe it — Barnes is striking out the world again, with a 48.4% strikeout rate that’s fourth among relievers, behind only Aroldis Chapman, James Karinchak, and Josh Hader. Oh yeah — he’s also walking 4.8% of his opponents and has been quite possibly the most valuable reliever in the game. Let’s get an explanation for that, shall we?

At surface level, it’s easy! Take a look at swinging strike rate, a statistic that becomes reliable quickly:

A 19.1% swinging strike rate is excellent; top-of-the-league excellent, really. Also true: Barnes hasn’t changed his pitch mix. He’s a two-pitch reliever, with a riding four-seamer and hammer curve. He throws them both roughly half the time, and they spin more or less exactly opposite out of his hand, which seems to help them both play up:

Great, problem solved. Hard curveball, decent fastball, they both play into each other’s deception, sounds like a good reliever to me. One small problem: there are maybe 50 relievers like that in baseball, and Barnes was also like that in the past, when he was far more walk-prone without his current killer strikeout numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

After three weeks of these rankings and plenty of feedback — both positive and constructive — I’ve decided to change the way pitching factors into overall team quality. I had been using FIP to assess pitching performance, but using only peripherals undervalued some teams who were actually quite good at preventing runs and overvalued other teams who couldn’t keep runs off the board despite good pitching fundamentals. So instead of using straight park- and league-adjusted FIP as the pitching metric, I’ll be using a straight 50/50 split of FIP and RA9- beginning this week. This gives us a way to evaluate a team’s pitching staff with a blend of actual run prevention (including teams who may or may not benefit from good defense) and pitching talent. This 50/50 composite is shown below as SP- and RP-. The rest of the factors remain the same — offense is represented by wRC+ and combined with the two pitching factors to create an overall team quality metric. Then a team’s expected win-loss record (“luck”) is factored in to produce a power ranking.

There’s a new team on top of the rankings this week. Despite losing Luis Robert for months on Sunday, the White Sox rose to the highest spot in the rankings after allowing just five total runs to score last week. Their starting rotation has been the best in baseball by a wide margin — the runs allowed by Lucas Giolito on Sunday were the first a White Sox starter had allowed in a week. There are certainly some concerns about their outfield, with two of their young stars now out for extended periods of time. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins have won the AL Central in each of the past two seasons, but their chances for running their streak to three in a row have taken some major hits. Not only have they stumbled out of the gate with a 12-20 record, but now they’ve lost Byron Buxton, potentially for several weeks, due to a Grade 2 hip strain. Adding insult to injury, at this writing the team owns the dubious distinction of the largest drop in their Playoff Odds since Opening Day.

The 27-year-old Buxton was injured during Thursday’s 4-3 loss to the Rangers. He pulled up hurt while running out a groundball in the ninth inning, but he may have injured himself before that. In the top of the seventh inning, he crashed into the outfield wall and then tumbled to the ground in an unsuccessful attempt to rob Jonah Heim of a home run:

In the bottom of the seventh, he didn’t run hard to first base on a groundout (I made a GIF because the video’s not embeddable, but here you can hear Twins play-by-play announcer Dick Bremer noting, “Buxton does not run hard out of the box”):

Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to early-season dominance or struggles, BABIP tends to be a featured player in many of the odder-looking lines. At the top of the league, you have the already amazing Mike Trout sporting a .519 BABIP, fueling a video game-like 236 wRC+ and a 1.224 OPS. On the flip side, quality players are still looking way up at the Mendoza line, such as Yasmani Grandal (.121 BA, .125 BABIP) or Kyle Tucker (.179 BA, .173 BABIP). Even though the evidence suggests that there’s more variability in BABIP ability among hitters than pitchers, a month of a season is a pitifully small amount of time to establish a new baseline expectation for BABIP. So, who is “earning” their BABIP and who isn’t so far?

Similar to the “x” Statcast stats, the ZiPS calculates “z” stats — I’ll let you guess what the z stands for — as part of its year-end projection model. These aren’t yet used in the simpler in-season model, though that’s in the works. Similar to Statcast, ZiPS estimates BABIP from the component parts: launch angle, exit velocity, speed data (for grounders), and so on. ZiPS also considers the direction a ball is hit, as a player’s pull tendency is a repeatable skill. This last data matters quite a bit. For example, grounders hit up the middle end up as singles about half the time, but grounders hit 15 degrees to the left or right of the second base bag are hits about a tenth of the time.

How does it work? The numbers are still volatile, but if all you have is zBABIP and actual BABIP, zBABIP is historically the better predictor. For all players with 50 PA in both 2020 and ’21, 2020 zBABIP is closer to 2021 BABIP than 2020 BABIP for 65% of players. Historically, the best predictor of actual BABIP, again using only these two stats, is a linear combination of 0.9 zBABIP and 0.1 actual BABIP.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part Two of the April edition of my monthly column, in which I recap what’s been going on in the Korean Baseball Organization on both a league- and team-wide scale. In case you missed it, Part One provided a brief introduction to this column, discussed league-wide trends, then covered the Samsung Lions, LG Twins, KT Wiz, and SSG Landers. Today’s post will cover the remaining six teams. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them as comments or reach out to me via Twitter. Without further ado, let’s talk some KBO!

Team Notes

Doosan Bears

The offseason was not kind to the Doosan Bears. Pitchers Chris Flexen and Raúl Alcántara both had phenomenal years, but were whisked away by foreign leagues. They also lost multiple regulars to free agency, including first baseman Jae-il Oh 오재일 and second baseman Joo-hwan Choi 최주환, both formidable hitters.

That doesn’t mean the Bears are no longer a playoff-caliber team – there’s still an abundance of talent on the roster, but there’s no guarantee this time around. At least replacement signee Walker Lockett has averaged six innings per start with a 3.54 FIP, but Aríel Miranda 미란다 seems like a disaster waiting to happen. His 36 strikeouts in 28.1 innings don’t look as impressive when you consider that (a) they’re spread across six starts, and (b) he also has 22 walks, six of them issued in a single outing. There’s upside, but unless Miranda finds the zone, the Bears will have a headache to deal with. Read the rest of this entry »

All the pitchers in the league seem to have gotten together and decided that someone has to throw a no-hitter each week. One of our best matchups this week involves a guy who already threw one, two guys meeting in LA who are certainly pitching well enough to nab one of their own, and an AL Central altercation between pitchers – and teams – trending in opposite directions.

Tuesday, May 11, 7:10 PM ET: John Means vs. Marcus Stroman

John Means got his 15 minutes of fame last week after methodically tearing the Mariners apart. Means’ destruction of the M’s lineup earned him a no-hitter and the baseball world’s spotlight, but the Baltimore bro has been reliably great all season. He’s allowed just five hits and three earned runs over his last 22.1 innings, striking out 27 hitters along the way. If we zoom out and look at his entire body of work across seven starts, we find that Means has become one of the best pitchers in the game thanks to one little trick.

Like a local magician bringing their act on the road, Means risked letting the secret out of the bag when he performed the trick over and over again in Seattle. The Orioles’ breakout star threw first pitch strikes to 26 of the 27 hitters he faced, elevating his first-pitch strike percentage to a maniacal 73.5%. Not only is this 12 percentage points above Means’ career-high, it’s also the highest of any American League starter. As a predominantly fastball-changeup artist, one would think that Means adheres to the traditional method of fastballs in the zone, changeups just underneath it. While he still utilizes his changeup in that fashion – to the tune of a 33.3% chase rate – it’s actually the pitch he throws most frequently in the zone, per Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »